You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Politics is the art of the possible.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.